From 1150 to 1500, the use of heraldry in the West was utilitarian: on armour in warfare, and on seals in peace. In the latter part of that period, it was used in peaceful ways and had much artistic value. Also, because from the beginning the use of arms had been associated with the higher feudal castes, heraldry acquired in later medieval times an identification with the concept of gentility that has persisted. To bear arms was the mark of a gentleman; therefore, to possess the desirable quality of gentility, a man needed to have armorial bearings. The great majority of those who seek to use coats of arms in the late 20th century are actuated by this motive. In the use of corporate arms, the motive of prestige rather than social distinction operates. As long as the possession of arms confers any social distinction, arms will be sought and used. At no previous time has there been so widespread an employment of heraldic devices.
The use of symbols has been universal among civilized communities, but these symbols have not assumed the character always associated with heraldry. Seals, too, which have a prominent place in heraldic practice, are of an antiquity approaching that of the most ancient civilizations. They were in use in the states that from Sumer onward flourished in Mesopotamia. Their use, for example, in the Babylonian Empire was the same as in medieval western Europe: to authenticate the documents (possibly of baked brick, later papyrus, later still parchment or vellum) on which they appeared or to which they were appended. All persons, literate and illiterate alike, were able to recognize the representation or symbol of a ruler or other potentate. In 12th-century Europe, heraldry first appeared on seals in the representations of persons. There is a clear line of descent from the seals of Assyria and Babylonia to the modern company seal, which is often heraldic.
Although originating in the small half continent of western Europe, heraldry has become universal, often, but not only, by way of western European colonization. Heraldry has spread to a considerable degree in both the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In the former British India, the hereditary princes adopted the use of heraldry. In the numerous independent states formed in Africa from the former British colonies, official armorial bearings are generally used, and the same is true of the new states that were formerly French colonies. In Russia in the 18th century, the use of armorial bearings was adopted from the West, and state emblems are not unknown in Communist eastern Europe. In the 13th century, the Celtic princes of Wales and Ireland and the chiefs of the Scottish Highland clans took up the use of heraldic symbols from the example of the feudal lords and knights of other parts of Europe.
Other kinds of emblematic identification have some similarities with heraldry. An example is the totem system, found among the indigenous peoples of America and Australia, in which an animal, plant, or other object serves as an emblem of family or clan and is often regarded as a reminder of its ancestry. Totemism varies greatly in different countries, as do the theories that have been advanced to explain it. The totem poles used by the Indians of the northwest coast of North America contain a heraldic element in their employment of a hereditary symbol for a family or tribe. They therefore come under the heading of approaches to heraldic designs and may be termed semi-heraldic in character.
The Japanese mon [Image] is very definitely a heraldic symbol, having many parallels in its use with the armorial bearings of Europe. It was used on helmets, shields, and breastplates but never, as in Europe, large enough to identify the wearer of the armour at any considerable distance. When identification was desired, the mon was displayed on flags. The mon has usually been equated in English with "crest" and in some European languages has been translated erroneously as "coat of arms." It most closely resembles the heraldic badge (distinctive mark used by retainers), however, which in Europe often antedated armorial bearings. Further resemblances to European heraldry in the use of the mon include: the decorative use of the symbol on clothes, furniture, and houses; the use on the clothes of retainers of great lords; the legal requirement of registration of the mon (dating from the 17th century); and the reservation of the chrysanthemum mon to the emperor, with junior members of the imperial family using a different variety of the flower. This last distinction corresponds exactly to the rules of heraldic precedence that apply to the European royal families. That areas so far removed from each other as western Europe and Japan should have developed a system of hereditary symbolism independently of one another is not surprising, for in both areas feudalism was the prevailing medieval political and social system. As in Europe, Japanese heraldry survived the obsolescence of armour and has remained in widespread use in the 20th century.
Despite some uninformed opinion to the contrary, tartan has no connection with heraldry. It is simply a form of weaving cloth that is by no means restricted to the Scottish Highlands. Armorial bearings were adopted by Highland chiefs in imitation of the Lowland chivalry from the 13th and 14th centuries. The badge of the chief was adopted and used extensively by the members of his clan.
Flags can be heraldic. That of the United Kingdom is certainly so; it is formed by the amalgamation of the flags of England, Scotland, and Ireland, these showing respectively the crosses of St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick, all of which are displayed heraldically. The United States flag has a quasi-heraldic character and appears to owe its principal ingredients to the armorial bearings of the first president, George Washington. The flag representing the republic of France, by contrast, is not heraldic, being merely an arrangement of the national colours.
In addition to national flags, there are banners, rectangular pieces of cloth showing the armorial bearings of the owner, and standards, strips of cloth that taper gradually to the end and usually bear heraldic devices but not the owner's full coat of arms.
An early development was the extension of heraldic design from its use by persons or families to its employment by institutions and associations of various kinds, a consequence of the concept that an assembly or body of people can be personified as an individual, much as a limited company or corporation is viewed as a legal "person." Medieval times provided numerous examples of arms borne by municipalities, churches, and colleges. The arms assumed by an individual or granted to him are regarded as being peculiarly his possession; therefore caution must be used in speaking of family arms. This question can be best dealt with in connection with the royal arms of the sovereign of the United Kingdom.
These arms are borne in their entirety only by the reigning king or queen. No other member of the royal family is permitted to bear the arms without introducing a "difference" mark that will show without doubt that the bearer is not the reigning sovereign. By analogy, the same condition holds for all so-called family arms, which belong to the head of the family; all other members should strictly bear them differenced--that is, with some mark of cadency (a sign indicating the position of the bearer with respect to the head of the family). In Scottish heraldry this rule is very rigidly enforced, but in England and elsewhere it has been allowed to fall into decay, except in the case of the royal family.
Probably the next development in the scope of heraldry was its use by ecclesiastics. The bishops and the abbots of the monasteries used arms on their seals from the 12th century onward. In this variety of heraldic usage, the arms were not those of individuals but of the body they temporarily represented--as also with arms borne by political units such as nations and cities or by educational establishments, many of which date from the Middle Ages. A great extension of medieval heraldry was connected with what came to be called the livery companies. These were guilds or associations of men in trades whose object was to uphold standards of craftsmanship. Most of them obtained charters from the crown and were granted arms. Among numerous examples in Britain are the Grocers, the Mercers, and the Glaziers companies. Membership in these still-existing companies no longer entails practice of their particular trades, but they possess property and have great charitable interests as well as considerable social esteem. Their armorial bearings are of great antiquity and are much displayed on their halls, letterheads, glass, silver, and so forth. Obviously, armorial bearings were assumed in the Middle Ages by such military bodies as the Knights Templars, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the Teutonic Knights, and the great Spanish orders. Military heraldry has continued to the present: each of the three British armed forces, for example, has badges, or in some cases coats of arms, which are in the care of officers of the English College of Arms. The newest of the British armed forces, the Royal Air Force, alone makes use of more than 1,000 coats of arms or badges.
In the 20th century the development of corporate heraldry has gone far beyond anything known before. Throughout the world, banks, insurance companies, and many other great commercial concerns use arms, as do an ever-increasing number of professional, educational, and trade associations.
[Image] Perhaps the event most illuminative of the modern scope of heraldry was the grant, in 1961, by the government of the Republic of Ireland of armorial bearings to the president of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy. Because arms are hereditary and their owners are regarded heraldically as of noble status, the grant amounted to a bestowal of nobility by a state on the head of another state, an occurrence unique in heraldic history.
